Fearing cutoff in China, Google alters access route

Wednesday

Jun 30, 2010 at 12:01 AMJun 30, 2010 at 10:40 AM

SAN FRANCISCO - Google plans to stop automatically sending users in mainland Chinese to its uncensored Hong Kong site. The change is an effort to appease Beijing as Google tries to renew its license to operate in China.

SAN FRANCISCO - Google plans to stop automatically sending users in mainland Chinese to its uncensored Hong Kong site. The change is an effort to appease Beijing as Google tries to renew its license to operate in China.

The action, experts on China say, amounts to a symbolic gesture that Google hopes will placate the Chinese government, which might be feeling pressure from citizens who are demanding continued access to Google's search engine.

Google might also be hoping that the Chinese government wants to avoid another showdown over Web censorship before a visit to the United States by President Hu Jintao.

Since Google said earlier this year that it could no longer justify filtering its search results in China to meet government requirements, the company has found a clever way to keep operating in the country. It has automatically redirected Chinese users to google.com.hk, which is maintained on the company's servers in Hong Kong.

But the Chinese government has objected to that solution. According to a Google blog post written by David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, and published Monday night, Beijing was prepared to reject Google's application for renewal of its Internet-content provider license, which effectively would force the company to shut down its website in the country.

The license-renewal application is due today.

Drummond wrote that in an effort to continue to serve Google's Chinese users while satisfying the government, the company was proposing a compromise.

Instead of being automatically redirected, Chinese users will see a page at google.cn with a single link to the Hong Kong site, where they can conduct searches or use other Google services, such as translation and music.

"This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page," Drummond wrote.

The company said it had resubmitted its content-provider license application based on this tactic.

"Google is trying to show a little accommodation," said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.